Lectern Gone, Romney Finds More Success

Mitt Romney in Orlando last month. He has been markedly more relaxed in debates this year.Credit
Chip Litherland for The New York Times

When Mitt Romney crammed for the Republican presidential debates four years ago, he went all out: The campaign built a stage with four lecterns and used senior staff members as stand-ins for his rivals, John McCain and Rudolph W. Giuliani. A room packed with highly paid media consultants and senior officials barked suggestions as they flipped through a white binder filled with policy positions. Over time, one aide said, the binder grew to resemble the Manhattan White Pages.

This month, when Mr. Romney prepared for his seventh debate of the 2012 campaign, at Dartmouth College, there were no lecterns. No one playing Rick Perry or Herman Cain. And no overstuffed policy binders. Mr. Romney and a few aides simply sat around a small table at the Hanover Inn in New Hampshire and batted around topics in the news.

The result was markedly different. Four years ago, Mr. Romney responded to a debate question about the Iraq war by lapsing into consultant-speak. “The question is kind of a non sequitur, if you will, and what I mean by that — or a null set,” he said.

At a recent debate, he gave short snappy answers — “nice try!” — as he delivered another in a string of largely successful debate performances.

This time, he has shed much of the operational and psychological baggage that weighed down, and ultimately doomed, his maiden campaign. Gone are the extensive debate rehearsals, the bickering consultants, the corporate dress code and the urge to explain everything. That may explain why, for all his ups and downs, Mr. Romney’s public presentation and debate appearances have been far more consistent this time.

Now the question is whether Mr. Romney can build on the progress he has made in becoming a looser, more confident candidate, and forge the kind of emotional bond with the electorate that can make the difference in a presidential campaign.

He can still be awkward and occasionally wooden, especially in face-to-face moments with voters that mean so much in Iowa and New Hampshire. But the mannequin-like grin is less frequent and his speech is more direct, less jargon-ridden. He even dresses differently; jeans are more common and neckties rarely make an appearance anymore.

In interviews over the last several weeks, more than a dozen of Mr. Romney’s top aides insisted that the former Massachusetts governor did not spend the last several years rewatching videos of his performances at town halls or debates.

The difference, they say, has more do with experience, knowing what to expect, clarifying ideas in a book, and feeling less pressure about the possibility of losing.

One longtime aide recalls Mr. Romney, a few weeks after conceding to Senator McCain in 2008, saying “Ahhhh, feels like I finally managed to loosen the laces on my shoes.”

A few weeks after President Obama was elected, about a dozen of Mr. Romney’s top advisers — dressed informally, for once — gathered at his Belmont, Mass., home, for a holiday party. Over coffee, sandwiches and doughnuts, Mr. Romney talked reflectively about the campaign. He had known why he was running, he told them. But he did not get that message across effectively; certainly, not in the way Mr. Obama had managed to embody hope and change. If he ran again, he said, he would do it very differently.

Afterward, he dispatched Bob White, a longtime friend and fellow partner at Bain Capital, to talk to other strategists, fund-raisers and staff members to determine where he had faltered.

And in Washington, Mr. Romney’s closest aides started meeting, sometimes at the Madison Hotel, to map out a second candidacy. Led by Stuart Stevens, who became Mr. Romney’s top strategist this year, the aides decided the campaign would have a different “culture” and “feel,” starting with the candidate.

Mr. Stevens and his advisers concluded that Mr. Romney had tried too hard to be everything to everyone. Four years ago, his speeches were highly tailored to his audiences, which resulted in a lack of authenticity. He needed to deliver one consistent message.

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“He would try to talk social issues with a church hall crowd, he would talk foreign policy issues with a think tank crowd, and he would talk business with a chamber of commerce crowd,” said Kevin Madden, Mr. Romney’s press secretary in 2008 who is now an informal adviser. “Now the crowds and the public are simpatico. They all have the same anxiety and concerns, and that’s the economy.”

Mr. Romney also retreated to his beach house in La Jolla, Calif. At his kitchen table, he wrote “No Apology,” in which he offers a searing critique of Mr. Obama and makes the case for his kind of management expertise.

By 2010, he had returned to the campaign trail, on behalf of House and Senate candidates. The appearances at public events and private fund-raisers gave him a low-pressure opportunity to begin “working out the kinks” in his message, as one aide put it.

Sleeves rolled up, tie gone, Mr. Romney stood next to the Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio last October at a restaurant in Land O’Lakes, Fla. “Who would have thought we’d look back on the Carter years as the good old days?” he joked.

A year later, Mr. Romney now leads most polls in the Republican presidential contest and his experience shows next to his rivals, who are almost all new to presidential politics. In debates and town halls, Mr. Romney opts for shorter answers, focusing on his ideals and principles rather than cerebral, technical details. He seems more comfortable answering questions about social issues that once tied him in knots.

Four years ago, Mr. Romney faced students at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire who grilled him on gay marriage.

“I’ve never been an advocate of gay marriage; I’ve opposed gay marriage and civil unions,” Mr. Romney said during a long soliloquy. “Now, at the same time,” he continued, “I’m against discrimination.”

The audience burst into laughter at the seemingly irreconcilable positions, which prompted another circuitous explanation from Mr. Romney.

This month, he faced similarly combative questions about gay marriage from college students at a town hall meeting in Hopkinton, N.H. After saying that he supported traditional marriage, Mr. Romney turned to another young questioner: “If it’s the same question, I don’t have a new answer. I’ve answered that question.” He quickly moved on.

That Mr. Romney still gets such questions is proof that he remains vulnerable to the charge that he is too willing to change his core beliefs — presenting a continuing problem among many conservative and religious voters. But four years ago Mr. Romney’s broader struggle was in connecting with voters.

In 2007, a waitress at the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester, N.H., angrily complained about the high cost of health care.

Many candidates would have crossed the tiny room to engage her directly, acknowledging her plight. Instead, Mr. Romney went on autopilot, dryly reciting the advantages of his Massachusetts health care plan, waved and ducked out of the restaurant.

Now, he’s trying to channel Bill Clinton and his gift of political empathy. The effort, if not the full effect, is there. At a recent town hall at St. Anselm College, in New Hampshire, a woman talked about taking care of her husband, who had died of Alzheimer’s disease.

It was a moment, and Mr. Romney managed to catch it.

“First of all, congratulations to you for honoring your husband’s request and caring for him for those four years,” he said. “My sympathy and condolences to you for the loss of a great man.”

Gone is Mr. Romney’s canned line about how he asked his wife, Ann, whether, in her wildest dreams, she thought he would run for president. “Mitt,” he would quote her as saying, “you weren’t in my wildest dreams.”

But the awkward jokes are not completely missing. At a stop in Milford, N.H., recently, Ms. Romney said she was eager to show voters “the other side of Mitt.”

He suddenly turned around to show his backside, prompting laughter from the crowd and from his wife, “Oh, dear.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 25, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Lectern Gone, Romney Finds More Success. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe